Friday, November 9, 2007

The studio is lookin' good and already buzzing with energy from all sorts of artists coming in to get working... the holidays are approaching fast and there's presents to make!

Having been in upheaval for the past two weeks, its fun to see the place full of the creative spirit. We had two different classes going on last night (there was also a Introductory Fusing Class) and many people coming in to work on projects.

Tomorrow (Saturday 11-10-07) there is a big demonstration happening by the owner of Northstar Glass - and then next week is the open house with a glass sale (25% off on some stuff!) and a fun raffle, etc... Common in and visit - see the new place - its exciting!

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

I can't seem to get off the topic - my studio is in upheaval! :) Here you can see Don working on the exhaust system for the torch set-up. Its awesome. Quite resourceful - an asset to the team!!! Andy came by today and built a wall - now the kilns have their own room. At the end of the day we fired up a whole bunch of glass. I leave to go out of town next week, so the pressure is on to settle the bits and pieces at the studio and get my butt in gear creating things. There are orders to fill, glass creations to make. But oh the chaos has been fun - and exhausting! Frankly people get grumpy after moving things for a week. Everyone has battle wounds, evidently gorilla glue does not come off hands, and all our backs are sore. Ahhh, moving.

I do not believe there is a single thing in this big ol' studio that has not been moved. Most things have been moved three and four times as they slowly are shuffled into their new position. One kiln sat outside for a while today, finally tonight around 8pm Don and I moved it back inside.

It blows my mind that every bit of whatnot in this place has been touched and moved around. Everything. And theres a lot of things.

The place is lookin' great! You'll have to come and visit next week - we're having our open house! Its hard to imagine how different it feels. I can't wait for all the shuffling to be done!

If you check out my Flickr account you can see more pictures of the studio and the remodel.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

I am up early every morning on the weekends, setting up my booth at the Portland Saturday Market. This weekend was beautiful classic fall weather (with out the Portland rain). All the trees are changing color and losing their leaves. I had to take a moment and walk along the waterfront, the sunrise was amazing.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Tonight was a big Portland Saturday Market membership meeting. We are in the middle of a big move (see earlier post) and usually November brings the choosing of spots for the new year. However, up until this point there has not been a concrete map of the new site. With no map, we cannot choose spots.

So tonight we saw a somewhat finalized map of the PSM. I took a picture with my cell phone. Not very good quality, and it'd be difficult to explain the new site. Basically... its the same, but different :)

And the meeting was the same as always. A lot of tired vendors, big drawings and layouts of the new site plan, and the one crazy old lady vendor who sits up front and heckles our board members.

What I liked was the mention of a long term dream, talk of using a lower deck on the west side of the Burnside Bridge and literally setting up under the bridge - like in Venice or London. Ooooh that would be awesome, the picture on the Right shows the part of the Bridge I speak of. All we would have to do is put a floor on the lower level of the bridge. The Steel Bridge was built in a similar fashion, the train uses the lower deck and the upper deck is car/pedestrian - the Burnside Bridge has the lower deck built, jutting some 200ft out over the water - and maybe one day the market might evolve to span out over the Willamette. I think that sounds romantic, like we are a European city. For now we will take up the North bound lanes of Naito Parkway, part of the under the bridge parking lot and Ankeny parking lot.

I thought you might be curious, so I am sharing the following information from Wikipedia, ENJOY!

Glass ingredients

Pure silica (SiO2) has a melting point of about 2,000°C (3,632°F). While pure silica can be made into glass for special applications (see fused quartz), other substances are added to common glass to simplify processing. One is sodium carbonate (Na2CO3), which lowers the melting point to about 1,000°C (1,832°F); "soda" refers to the original source of sodium carbonate in the soda ash obtained from certain plants. However, the soda makes the glass water soluble, which is usually undesirable, so lime (calcium oxide (CaO), generally obtained from limestone), some magnesium oxide (MgO) and aluminum oxide are added to provide for a better chemical durability. The resulting glass contains about 70 to 72 percent silica by weight and is called a soda-lime glass. Soda-lime glasses account for about 90 percent of manufactured glass.

As well as soda and lime, most common glass has other ingredients added to change its properties. Lead glass, such as lead crystal or flint glass, is more 'brilliant' because the increased refractive index causes noticeably more "sparkles", while boron may be added to change the thermal and electrical properties, as in Pyrex. Adding barium also increases the refractive index. Thorium oxide gives glass a high refractive index and low dispersion, and was formerly used in producing high-quality lenses, but due to its radioactivity has been replaced by lanthanum oxide in modern glasses. Large amounts of iron are used in glass that absorbs infrared energy, such as heat absorbing filters for movie projectors, while cerium(IV) oxide can be used for glass that absorbs UV wavelengths (biologically damaging ionizing radiation).

Properties such as density and melting point vary greatly depending on the material added to the silica: density can range from light display glass with 2.37 g/cm³ to high lead-content flint glass with 7.2 g/cm³, while melting points can range from 500 to 1650 °C.[13] These ranges can be exceeded, but usually at the cost of stability or practicality.

Under extremes of pressure and temperature solids may exhibit large structural and physical changes which can lead to polyamorphic phase transitions[14] . In 2006 Italian scientists created an amorphous phase of carbon dioxide using extreme pressure. The substance was named amorphous carbonia(a-CO2) and exhibits an atomic structure resembling that of ordinary window glass [15].